An algorithm for automatically designing deterministic mechanisms without payments

Mechanism design is the art of designing the rules of the game so that a desirable outcome is reached even though the agents in the game behave selfishly. This is a difficult problem because the designer is uncertain about the agents?? preferences and the agents may lie about their preferences. Traditionally, the focus in mechanism design has been on designing mechanisms that are appropriate for a range of settings. While this approach has produced a number of famous mechanisms, much of the space of possible settings is still left uncovered. In contrast, in automated mechanism design (AMD), a mechanism is computed on the fly for the setting at hand??a universally applicable approach.